So, I'm finally home. I've seen a lot of the inside of airports lately. 8 hour on the way out. 6 hours today. On a good note, I did get about 2 inches of the Tangled Yoke Cardigan knitted today in the airport. I did purchase some yarn on my trip, but I'm too tired to unpack it tonight, so I'll save that for another day.

Ummmm...Houston...we seem to have a problem...

I looked at my christmas gifts(2 sweaters, 2 shirts, DvDs, CDs, books, etc.)...the gifts I'm bringing back for my brother, his wife and baby and all the stuff I've bought while here: 3 pairs of shoes (awesome sale at DSW), 1 pair of pants, 2 cardigan sweater sets, 1 sweater, 3 pairs of socks, sock yarn, xmas cards for next year and gift tags...Ummm...I don't know how I'm going to get it back to DC. I also deliberately underpacked on my way here and didn't bring clothes for the whole 10 days. I think I need to go buy a tote to stuff full and carry with me. I should also lay off the whole shopping thing. Next year, mental note, bring an extra suitcase...

I've been having fun while in St. Louis. I've been shopping with my sister, my mom. I'm going to lunch with my former boss tomorrow. I need to do some work (Yuck, I know) tomorrow. I'll be ready to go back to DC on Sunday though.

Merry Christmas

It was a good holiday this morning. Starting with Christmas Tree coffee cake, which my aunt made. My neice was so cute. She had to help open every single gift, which took an hour long process anyway and made it into a 2-3 hour process. She was so cute to watch and she just loved opening the gifts whether they were for her or not.

I got some wonderful gifts. Santa bought out Talbots and I got 2 wonderful shirts (from my sister) and 2 sweaters from my parents. I also got the BBC DVD of Pride & Prejudice (yes, the one with Colin Firth!!!). I got several more DVDs, a CD, and the most awesome spatula in the world. There were knitty gifts as well. I got Lace Style (I really want to do the Katherine Hepburn cardigan and the Lily of the Valley Shawl.

In the afternoon, I played Candyland, puzzles, Cooties, Go Fish and was the "Old Maid" for the 3rd tim in as many days. The only one I escaped from was Hi-Ho-Cherrie-O.

All in all it was a wonderful day spent with my family and I hope everyone else was able to have a great holiday with their family as well.

I spent 7 hours at Dulles yesterday waiting for my plane to leave. I seriously began to wonder whether I was even going to make it to DC. I finally got here about 1am CST, which we all know was 2am EST. Ugghhh! I slept until about 8:30 this morning and I'm about ready to take a nap.

Have a great Holiday.

The floor has been vacuumed. The clothes have been packed. The knitting chosen and dishes done. Yes. Tomorrow, I'm boarding a plane for a trip home to St. Louis. I'm going to have to bring my computer home and do some work. Some recent changes have necessitated additional work on my part. Yuck.

So, everyone have a great holiday.

2007: A Year in Review

New Jobs with same company: 2

Moves halfway accross the country: 1

New apartment: 1

Boyfriend: 0

Knitted objects - 27

• 10 hats
• 2 sweaters (1 baby, 1 toddler(
• 1 pair baby mitts
• 5 pairs of socks
• 1 shawl
• 5 baby bibs
• 2 baby blankets
• 1 shawl

More knitted items than ever, but not nearly as many pairs of socks. Unlike last time I moved, I kind of went into a knitting funk this year.

All in all, I'd rate this year as a good year. Professionally, my life is finally where I want it to be. I like where I live. I like my apartment. I like being near family again and being able to watch my nephew grow up, like I got to spend time with my neice when she was small is definitely wonderul. Still no boy, but given the troubles others are having, I'm okay with that. I do miss my friends from KC. It's hard to find people that you connect with as much as that and I was definitely blessed to have found such good friends in such a short time in KC. I assumed it would be as easy in DC, but time will tell.

Looking forward to 2008, many knitted items. The funk seems to be over. A new car early in 2008 and then we'll see where life takes me. It seems to be working for me so far.

What does an 11 month pair of sock look like??

Like this... I bet you were expecting some big pattern, difficult repeats, lace, cable, but not plain stockinette... I knit the first sock. It didn't quite fit me, which means, it wouldn't fit my sister or my sister-in-law, so it sat waiting for me to either frog of find someone with a slighly smaller foot. I found someone with a slighly smaller foot. :-) And these are her xmas present. Yipeee!!! Another one down.

Fabulous Christmas Gifts

I celebrated christmas with my brother, his wife and my nephew this afternoon. My 6 month old nephew was a hoot. He'd tear a strip of wrapping paper off the gift and promptly try to jam it into his mouth. He was so cute. He loved his gifts, even if he didn't really understand what was going on.

I got several fabulous gifts includin...
...a le crueset stock pot. Love, love, love this. I never need to have a wedding you know. I have almost everything you could ever need for the kitchen.

I also got one of the most fabulous comfort items in the world...

Pink Fuzzy slippers. They are so soft and are currently on my feet as I type. They are my favorite thing in the world. I come home from work, take off my uncomfortable work heels and put on my pink fuzzy slippers. Ahhhhh! They're a replacement for my old pair that are getting very worn through on the bottom.

I also got the christmas classic cartoons. The deluxe set of all of them. Yippeee!!

Now, I just need to survive the next 5 days at work and then I'm headed to St. Louis.

ummmm....

...yeah...beret is not going to be a holiday gift this year...
It's large on my head and I have a freakishly large head and the intended recipient has a freakishly small head. I think I'll pick out the ribbing band and do some more decreases and keep it for me because, as far as hats go, this doesn't look too bad on me.

So, as a replacement, I made Odessa from knitty.com in a spare ball of Cashsoft I had lying around.
I ws supposed to clean my house today, but, as expected that didn't happen. So tomorrow, I'm going to have to actually do some work. I'm leaving for 10 days to go to St. Louis and I can't stand coming back to a dirty house. So it's kitchen cleaning, vacuuming and laundry for tomorrow so I can pack because work will be crazy since I'm trying to escape for a week and I have a party to go to and then Friday night I'm out of here. Hurrah!!!

I've seen it all...it was snowing indoors today. I work adjacent to this ritzy mall and we went over to grab lunch from the food court and we heard this weird noise...and the next thing we knew it was snowing inside the mall. Yep. snowing. It kind of evaporated by the time it hit the bottom level and they had "wet floor" signs all over the place and it's a good thing. It was both magical and freaky.

I'm still working on the mohair beret. It's taking forever. It's like knitting 2 hats by the time you knit it out and then knit it back in. I have 4 more rows of ribbing at the brim and it's done. Yippee. Then it's onto Odessa and then...blissfully, I'll be finished.

I can't wait for the weekend!!! Tomorrow's friday, right???

So, I went to an all day training class today and instead of going back to work at 4pm, we all played hooky and went to the movies. I love my team! Besides, we all got little bonuses at the meeting because we've been working so hard. I'm rying to figure out something special to buy myself.

So, back to the movie, I went to see August Rush. I loved it. Admittedly, you have to suspend disbelief, but I really liked. Keri Russell is so beautiful. I think she's aging exceptionally well and I think she's even more beautiful now than when she was on Felicity. Ohhh!!!! and you fans of Moonlight out there...Alex O'Loughlin has a bit part and he has short hair and mmm!mmm!mmm! is he cute.

She wore a...

...white mohair beret... The kind your wonderful friend knits for you for christmas... Hat mania continues. I don't know why I didn't knit more of them before. Of course, I've made all of these for other people. I have been figuring out which ones look best on me. The Calorimetry doesn't look good. Yarn Harlot's unoriginal hat looks good on me and I have another skein of the yarn and can make a second one. I'm hoping that the beret will look good on me as well, unfortunately, I won't have enough mohair to make another for me, but there's always more mohair in the world...this is just the test knit. :-)

And the stockings were hung by the chimmney...

Santa came early to my house....
No tree, but they look very pretty in front of the fire place.

I had a bad day on Friday, so I took a trip to the yarn store near the office and this beautiful yarn came home with me.
It's Claudia Hand Painted fingering weight in Chocolate Cherry. It's so pretty!!! I'm going to have a hard time deciding my next pair of socks...

More Headgear

Still on my quest to make hats for everyone I know. Another Calorimtry. Out of Patons SWS following the same patter as the other one.
So, I had 2 half skeins of Patons left over. Kind of similar colorways. So, I spliced them together where the colors matched and tried Quant.
Which I was intrigued by in the new knitty. Only slighly less than the Jeannie Shawl. So, I immediately cast on my spliced yarn. No idea what it's going to look like, but it will be an adventure.

On another note...Ummmm... I semm to have a problem...
I'm stuck in a colorway!!!

Snow!

Ugghh!!!! I'd like to introduce the city of Reston to the concept of getting ahead of the snow... I decided that about the time I slid through an intersection narrowly escaping being hit by about 4 cars and driving up on the grass at the other side. I, was remarkable, fine except for my heart which was a'pumpin hard at the near miss. I pulled off the grass and proceeded much more slowly from that point. I was wondering whether they knew about the concept of salt here until I hit the highway...which was 45 minutes after I left my apartment. Mind you, it is a 2 mile drive... All in all, it took me a little over an hour and a half to drive the 9 miles to get to work. Only an hour to get home, so not bad considering it was snowing again.

My second attempt at Calorimetry. The first one ended up too big. Worked much better this time.

Another day another hat

Another day another hat.

Definitely on a hat kick these days.
Like this one too. Robin's Egg Blue Hat from I dream of knitting, although mine should probably be Pink Hat. Still need to finish 2 more hats for christmas gifts. I love, love, love ravelry. You can look up hat patterns for the guage yarn you have laying around and find one that will work right. That's how I've found all the hat patterns I've been doing. It's a blast. I have another finished and waiting for pompoms, but I washed it before adding pompoms and it's still wet, so I should hopefully have pictures of that one tomorrow. Back to ravelry to find another pattern for some yarn...

30 minutes to shower and shave legs
35 minutes to put hair in hot rollers
20 minutes to apply makeup
15 minutes to wiggle into panty house and Spanx (thank you Oprah)
2.5 hours putting in an appearance at the company xmas party in 3 inch heels=

PAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can barely walk and I left 2 hours before the end when I hit my allowable people per square foot allowance. 2000 people in 1 ballroom is way too many....